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October is Metal Month at Radio.com. Throughout the month, we’ll have artist interviews as well as mini-documentaries about metal, metal fans and the birthplace of metal. And book reports: reading is fundamental, even for headbangers, and we’ll have reviews of some of the best recent metal biographies and retrospectives. Horns up!

“Beautiful…”

“Gorgeous…”

“Passionate…”

Those words, among many others, were used by our all-star group of heavy metal artists and experts in our Radio.com Inside Outmini-documentary, Metalheads Talking Metal. We sat down with some of the icons of the last few decades of heavy metal and hard rock to talk about the culture, why it’s so enduring, and how it has changed. Unsurprisingly, Judas Priest‘s Rob Halford, Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Sour), Phil Anselmo (Pantera, Down, Superjoint Ritual and now a solo artist), Dave Mustaine and Dave Ellefson (Megadeth) and Jason Newsted (Metallica, Voivoid and now his own Newsted), all had a lot to say on the matter. As did Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman, co-authors of the essential Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, Howie Abrams, who wrote the zine-styled Merciless Book of Metal Lists,and Zeena Koda, radio host and metal writer (FADER, Revolver). All of the above have their own take on metal, but the one thing they agree on is that the genre is as strong as ever, perhaps because it’s more inclusive. It turns out that heavy metal being the turf for just young, angry, straight white guys (and maybe — maybe — their girlfriends) is long over. Watch below.